"Was the Echo coming after you?" Morris asked.
"Possibly", Perrin answered. "it does appear that Ivan's going after the escorts quite deliberately. We had two missiles shot at us by the last Backfire raid. One ran into our chaff cloud, and fortunately our Sea Wolf intercepted the other. Unfortunately, the one that exploded behind us amputated our towed array and we're down to just our 2016 sonar."
"So you've been assigned to ride shotgun on us then?"
"It would seem so."
The captains lapsed into shoptalk, which was the whole point of the dinner in any case. O'Malley found the English helicopter pilot while the tables were set, and they started the same thing while the American played the piano. Somewhere in the Royal Navy was a directive: when dealing with American naval officers, get them over early, get a drink in them first, then talk business.
Dinner was excellent, though the Americans, judgment was somewhat affected by the liquid refreshments. O'Malley listened closely as his captain described the loss of Pharris, the tactics employed by the Russians, and how he had failed to counter them properly. It was like listening to a man relate the death of his child.
"Under the circumstances, hard to see what you could have done differently," Doug Perrin sympathized. "Victor is a capable opponent, and he must have timed your coming off the sprint very carefully."
Morris shook his head. "No, we came off sprint well away from him, and that blew his solution right out the window. If I'd done things better, those men wouldn't be dead. I was the captain. It was my fault."
Perrin said, "I've been there in the submarine, you know. He has the advantage because he's already been tracking you." He flashed O'Malley a look.
Dinner ended at eight. The escort commanders would meet the following afternoon, and the convoy would sail at sundown. O'Malley and Morris left together, but the pilot stopped at the brow.
"Forgot my hat. I'll be back in a minute." He hurried back to the wardroom. Captain Perrin was still there.
"Doug, I need an opinion."
"He shouldn't go back out in his current state. Sorry, Jerry, but that's how I see things."
"You're right. There's one thing I can try." O'Malley made a small purchase and rejoined Morris two minutes later.
"Captain, any particular reason you have to head right back to the ship?" he asked quietly. "Something I need to talk about and I don't want to do it aboard. It's a personal thing. Okay?" The pilot looked very embarrassed.
"How about we take a little walk?" Morris agreed. The two officers walked east. O'Malley looked up and down the street, and found a waterfront bar with sailors going in and out. He steered Morris into it and they found a booth in the back.
"Two glasses", O'Malley told the barmaid. He unzipped the leg pocket of his flight suit and withdrew a bottle of Black Bush Irish whiskey.
"You want to drink here, you buy it here." O'Malley handed her two twenty-dollar bills.
"Two glasses and ice." His voice did not brook argument. "And leave us alone." Service was quick.
"I checked my logbook this afternoon," O'Malley said after tossing off half his first drink. "Four thousand three hundred sixty hours of stick time. Counting last night, three hundred eleven hours of combat time."
"Vietnam. You said you were there." Morris sipped at his own.
"Last day, last tour. Search-and-rescue mission for an A-7 pilot shot down twenty miles south of Haiphong." He had never even told his wife this story. "Saw a flash, made the mistake of ignoring it. Thought it was a reflection off a window or a stream or something. Kept going. Turned out it was probably a reflection of a gunsight, maybe a pair of binoculars. One minute later some hundred-millimeter flak goes off around us. Helo just comes apart. I get her down, we're on fire. Look left-copilot's torn apart, his brains are in my lap. My crew chief, a third-class named Ricky, he's in the back. I look. Both his legs are torn off. I think he was still alive then, but there wasn't a damned thing I could do about it-couldn't even get to him the way things were-and there's three people heading towards us. I just ran away. Maybe they didn't see me. Maybe they didn't care-hell, I don't know. Another helo found me twelve hours later." He poured himself another drink and topped off the one for Morris. "Don't make me drink alone."
"I've had enough."
"No, you haven't. And neither have I. It took me a year to get over that. You don't have a year. All you got's tonight. You gotta talk about it, Captain. I know. Think it's bad now? It gets worse."
He took another pull on the drink. At least it was good stuff, O'Malley told himself He watched Morris sit there for five minutes, sipping at his drink and wondering if he should just go back to the ship. The proud captain. Like all captains, condemned to live alone, and this one was lonelier than most. He's afraid I'm right, O'Malley thought. He's afraid it will get worse. You poor bastard. If you only knew.
"Run through it" the pilot said quietly. "Analyze it one step at a time."
"You already did that for me."
"I have a big mouth. Has to be for my feet to fit in it. You do it in your sleep, Ed. Might as well do it when you're awake."
And, slowly, he did. O'Malley coached him through the sequence. Weather conditions, ship's course and speed. What sensors were operating. In an hour they were three quarters of the way down the bottle. Finally they got to the torpedoes. Morris's voice started to crack.
"There just wasn't anything else I could do! The Goddamned thing just came in. We only had one nixie out, and the first fish blew that the hell away. I tried to maneuver the ship, but-"
"But you were up against a homing torpedo. You can't outrun 'em and you can't outturn 'em."
"I'm not supposed to let-"
"Oh, horseshit!" The pilot refilled the glasses. "You think you're the first guy ever lost a 'can? Didn't you ever play ball, Ed? Hell, there's two sides, and both of 'em play to win. You expect those Russian sub skippers are just gonna sit there and say, 'Kill me, kill me'? You must be dumber 'n I thought."
"My men-"
"Some of them are dead, most of them aren't. I'm sorry some're dead. I'm sorry Ricky died. Kid wasn't even nineteen yet. But I didn't kill him, and you didn't kill your men. You saved your ship. You brought her back with most of the crew."
Morris drained his glass with one long pull. Jerry refilled it, not bothering with ice.
"It's my responsibility. Look, when I got back to Norfolk, I visited-I mean, I had to visit their families. I'm the captain. I gotta-there was this little girl, and... Jesus, O'Malley, what the hell do you say?" Morris demanded. He was sobbing, near tears, Jerry saw. Good.
"They don't put that in the book," O'Malley agreed. You think they would have learned by now.
"Pretty little girl. What do you tell the kids?" The tears started. It had taken nearly two hours.
"You tell the little girl that her daddy was a good man and he did his best, and you did your best, cause that's all we can do, Ed. You did everything right, but sometimes it just doesn't matter." It wasn't the first time O'Malley had had men cry on his shoulder. He remembered doing it himself What a miserable life this can be, he thought, that it can bring good men to this.
Morris recovered a few minutes later, and by the time they finished the bottle both men were as drunk as either ever got. O'Malley helped his captain up and walked him to the door.